Hey so, recently I made some improvements and was able to finally not be at the very bottom of the dps barrel (my offspec is dps and main is tank). This happened last week against Imperial Vizier 10M normal, I think I was like 3rd dps wise at around 75k or something (unfortunately it wasn't logged though). In feral gear my iLvl is 494, and I'm enchanted/reforged the best I can (knowing that I share some gear with tank spec) with the advice I've gotten from this site.

Then last night on Spirit Kings 10m N I just "tanked," did a weak 66k. Not sure why. Here is the log, and I would really appreciate it if anyone could give it a look over and let me know what I'm doing wrong:

One thing worth mentioning is that I symbiosis'd a shaman just for the heck of trying something different. However unfortunately Ovale decided to "inject" it into it's graphical rotation, which screwed me up a bit as I tried to work around this. But there is no way this accounts for why my dps was so low.

From comparing a top ranking log to mine, I noticed this much:-My melee is hitting for Avg 14k, top log was 16k. -Top log had 6% higher rake uptime. -Top log had a whopping 25% higher rip uptime. -Top log had around 4% higher uptime for savage roar.

A few other things to note. The top log is in mostly heroic gear with a fully upgraded 509 staff with both Sha and extra gems. The better Rip/Rake uptime come with practice on the fight. As you have said you normally Bear, so you likely haven't gotten as used to the fight as the top log getter has. Likely they have done it on heroic for weeks so the normal mode was done very fast and he got a bit of luck.

You point out the biggest issues with your own DPS. SR and Rip could be much better on this fight. You would be helped by putting symbiosis on Bliznok (Warlock) for soul swap. This will let you move Rip from the pervious Spirit King to the new one. You should make sure to refresh Rip with an FB shortly before the swap so you can get as much time to get going on the new guy. You also suffered with some bad luck. Your OOC procs were VERY low. Only getting 1 once every 25 seconds or so. You also delayed your final Berserk + Pot till the last second and as a result lost about 12 seconds on the pot. Also the last little bit of the fight you seemed to delay TF a little more each time. You likely could have gotten one more in with more consistent use.

Considering your gear is setup for bear and DPS isn't your main spec I would say you are doing a good job. Remember, you will get better as you practice and the better you know the fight. Keep at it and you will improve.

Yeah I know comparing a heroic geared player with me isn't exactly fair, but I know my own dps is having issues, as you pointed out. And yeah not putting symbiosis on the Warlock was a derp. And yeah there was a bit of a mess up timing that last berserk to be sure.

I guess in terms of actual rotation, I know rake is supposed to be as high as possible uptime. But what about rip? I've heard some people say like...75%ish for rip. But I know one of the top ranked ferals for 10m N Spirit Kings had a much higher rip uptime than that. What would you say my rip uptime should be?

Tinderhoof wrote:This will let you move Rip from the pervious Spirit King to the new one. You should make sure to refresh Rip with an FB shortly before the swap so you can get as much time to get going on the new guy.

Will this actually work on normal, or are you thinking of the heroic mode? I have found it difficult to soul-swap when the previous target has died, and on normal you wouldn't have more than one king alive at a time.

If you look when they die they just turn into a ghost. The Rip is still ticking on that ghost just doing no damage. You can see this in the logs by looking at the Rip uptime. You can see it's actually on 2 targets at once. The only time you end up getting issues with being able to take a bleed off a target even if it's dead is if the target was summoned and leaves no body. Examples this tier, Garalons Legs. Same thing about combo points, if there is no body you won't be able to make use of them. Now I haven't tested trying to do it on normal lately, but I think it should still work.

Ah that's very good to know thanks! I remember reading about issues with Garalon's legs and I had some frustration when I mis-timed shifting the bleeds from Amber Constructs on our early attempts. I will definitely give this another look for spirit kings.